Catching up with 'Blindspotting' writer-actors Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal

Dana Barbuto The Patriot Ledger

Sunday

Jul 22, 2018 at 10:57 AM

BOSTON - Real-life BFFs Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal – stars and co-writers of the comedy-drama “Blindspotting” – spent the night before our interview hosting a question-and-answer session after their movie screened at Somerville Theater as part of the International Film Festival of Boston. They stuck around, taking selfies with fans, even phoning co-star Jasmine Cephas Jones via FaceTime to answer a question from the audience. Later, Diggs and Casal attended the midnight screening of the 156-minute “Avengers: Infinity War.” It was well after 3 a.m. by the time they hit the sack.

When I catch up with them the next morning at the Eliot Hotel, they’re tired. Diggs nurses a cup of tea, Casal a coffee. But they perk up to talk about “Blindspotting,” a movie that has been their passion project for a decade. The film made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered as the coveted opening-night movie, earning raves for its hilarious and heartbreaking look at gentrification, racism, police brutality and classism in their native Oakland. The movie opens in Boston on Friday.

“It’s a buddy comedy in a world that won't let it be one," Diggs said.

Diggs, 36, and Casal, 32, said they both got emotional seeing the film for the first time with an audience.

“My dad was squeezing my hand,” Diggs said.

“Blindspotting” traces the story of Collin, an ex-con trying to make it through the last 72 hours of his probation. But when he witnesses a white police officer shooting and killing an unarmed black man, Collin is forced to meet head-on his rapidly changing city. Also, his friendship with his white, troublemaker best friend from childhood, Miles (Casal), is tested. “Blindspotting” also features Jasmine Cephas Jones, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Ethan Embry, Kevin Carroll, Nyambi Nyambi, Wayne Knight, John Chaffin, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Janina Gavankar. Carlos López Estrada, making his feature film debut, directs.

“We had such an incredible cast and crew. The movie did not turn out how we envisioned it at all,” Casal said. “It was so much better.”

The movie is a bittersweet valentine to the Bay Area, which has a significant co-starring role. “The Oakland you see in the movie is the Oakland we grew up in,” Diggs said. And, they literally wore that pride with T-shirts that spelled out Raiders, Golden State Warriors and Yay Area during appearances at SXSW festival and events in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago. By the time they reach Boston, the last leg before a break, Diggs dons a black T-shirt and Casal a plain white one.

“We are fresh out of Bay Area shirts. They’re all dirty,” Diggs said, laughing.

Diggs most recently appeared on screen in last year’s surprise hit, “Wonder.” But he is best known for reciting lightning fast rhymes, particularly in his Tony award-winning dual performance as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, in the original Broadway production of “Hamilton.” Casal is an acclaimed poet and musician who has appeared on three seasons of HBO’s “Def Poetry.” They slip in and out of spoken-word verse in the script, giving both actors the chance to rap.

"From the jump, we knew that we wanted to use verse in an interesting way that felt honest to the Bay Area. ... The language there is different," Diggs told the Somerville audience.

Adds Casal: "There's an inherent rhythmic nature of people in the Bay Area. It's a musical place, with heightened language, with slang and with verse. It's just baked into the blood."

Both Diggs and Casal graduated Berkeley High School in different years and became best friends after their paths crossed again on the vibrant Bay Area performing arts scene. That was about 17 years ago, and neither has looked back. They’re so tight that Diggs even thanked Casal in his Tony’s acceptance speech. The bromance, however, made filming some scenes in “Blindspotting” a challenge. At one point, Miles and Collin have a pivotal blowout that was a real gut punch for both men, as well as viewers.

“We’ve never had a real falling out, so that was hard,” Diggs said.

Casal agrees. “We have the type of relationship where if there is ever a problem, and there usually isn’t, we deal with it right there.”

The confrontation scene was a late-night shoot taken in a single 12-minute-plus take, Diggs said. It was shot multiple times. Casal said that scene is the pinnacle of “toxic masculinity,” and the two characters go for the other's jugular. Once the cameras stopped rolling they were back to being “Diggs” and “Rafa.”

“We hugged,” Diggs said, laughing, “We hugged after many scenes, not just that one. But that one was tough.”

Diggs was a track star at Brown University in Providence, setting the 110-meter-hurdles record before he graduated in 2004. “I hope someone has broken that record that by now, but I think I still hold the record at my high school,” he said.

With a Tony and Grammy award, Diggs is halfway to earning an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.) His next project is the futuristic-thriller TV series “Snowpiercer,” based on the 2013 movie made by Bong Joon-ho. He’s also appeared on the sitcom “Black-ish” and is a member of the experimental hip-hop trio Clipping. Diggs said he got the “Hamilton” gig through his friend, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator. A touring production comes to Boston for a two-month run in September. “The touring cast is terrific, you’ll love it, especially the actor playing George Washington,” he said.

Oh, and about “Avengers: Infinity War”? Diggs and Casal had the same WTF reaction most of us had about that ending.